


I come alone here

by cannibalinc



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Life Is Strange: Before The Storm Spoilers, Max arranges to have herself killed, Suicide Notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 08:19:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13700568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannibalinc/pseuds/cannibalinc
Summary: It isn't that Chloe is destined to die.(Max thinks she'll count just fine.)





	I come alone here

Max feels her eyelashes catch on the eyepiece of her camera. She blinks with the shutter, the bulb igniting Chloe in a luminate caress. Maybe someone does have to die to keep Arcadia Bay from being swallowed up and destroyed. But it doesn’t have to be Chloe.

\--

Max has attended three funerals in the last thirty minutes. It lost its novelty before the end of the first, and now, Mrs. Price’s soft crying has paled from a scorching orange ache to lilac numbness. They lower the casket.

Max raises her hand and undoes each jarring click until the gleaming coffin retraces its path.

She drops her heavy arm and watches it happen again. Her head pounds.

They lower the casket.

She raises her hand.

\--

Max thinks she finally gets it.

It isn’t that Chloe is destined to die. The universe could hardly be so concerned.

 _All around me is eternity_ , and all that.

But Max has been trying to keep something the universe deemed to take, and she hasn’t offered anything in return.

Simple alchemy.

\--

She can’t save Chloe’s dad. She can’t change that day no matter how many times she tires. It always ends the same way, with Chloe’s pale face and begging eyes.

 _Please kill me, Max_.

\--

It’s Rachel Amber, she decides. Or bust.

It seems apt. So much of Max’s life in Arcadia Bay since returning from Seattle started and ended with the mystery of Rachel Amber. She was there to save Chloe first, Max thinks as she runs her fingers over the crinkled pages of Chloe’s journal.

_Dear Max_

_I love Rachel Amber_ , every page says in every other word but that. Max thinks she kind of loves her too, even having never met her. It’s the done thing.

\--

The photo is of Chloe and Rachel the day before Rachel goes missing.

Max wakes up in her room in Seattle, throws on her shoes, steals her dad’s credit card and takes a cab to the bus station. She’s in Arcadia Bay by evening.

She goes to the Prescott barn and takes all the photos she can, labels them and seals them in a yellow envelope. It’s final resting place is under the windshield wiper of David’s car. She breaks into Chloe's room to leave a different kind of note. 

\--

Chloe isn’t at the Vortex party. Max thinks about winding back a little, to find her, to see her one last time.

She intercepts Nathan and Rachel instead.

She’s… consuming.

Even stumbling, laughing, stuttering. The room is an orbit around her, at the mercy of her mass. It’s a wonder Nathan ever took her away without anyone noticing.

Everyone is wasted by the time Max slips in, and they don’t care that no one knows who she is. Only Nathan bears the sweaty nervousness of sobriety. It doesn’t take much for Max to attach Victoria to Rachel and divert Nathan’s attention. There’s always another night, he must be thinking. Any girl will do to impress Mr. Jefferson.

When he tries to stab her with a syringe, she rewinds the arc of his arm and turns his own drug on him. The fleshy pop of the needle piercing his skin ripples into her bones. She takes him to the barn and uses his phone to text Mr. Jefferson. Nathan stops breathing by the time Max hears the car pulling up.

For Rachel, she thinks when Nathan dies.

\--

She acts like the scared, confused victim when Mr. Jefferson steps into the dark room.

She is scared.

“Here,” Mr. Jefferson says, offering her a water. “You look pale.”

Max thinks, _I could still get away_.

But there’s still Chloe.

She takes the bottle.

“What’s your name?”

“Max.”

“How did you get here, Max?”

“I don’t… I don’t remember. Nathan said he wanted to show me something. It’s all blurry.”

“Why don’t we sit down, Max? Here, I’ll call the paramedics. Just relax.”

She drinks.

For Chloe, she thinks.

“You know, you’re very pretty, Max.”

Time falls between her fingers like cold pebbles. She thinks she sees Nathan, lying beside her, arm outstretched. Her head is heavy.

For Chloe.

A camera flashes.

She could still rewind.

A hand cups her cheek.

She could still rewind.

“You’re a natural, Max.”

She could still rewind.

\--

She thinks about the cyclone. The roar and whip of the wind, the groan of the lighthouse as it succumbs to its own weakness. She thinks about a future where she let that rage unravel all of Arcadia Bay, a furious, cosmic justice for denying one death.

She thinks about this and is calm.

\--

 _Dear Chloe,_ she writes on the last page of Chloe’s journal. _I’ve discovered something really bad going on in Arcadia Bay. I’m sorry I didn’t text you back._

She tucks the picture of them dressed as pirates beside the note. She wants to write more.

She doesn’t.

\--

She could still rewind.

\--

She doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> (David finds the pictures, Jefferson is arrested, they find Nathan and Max’s bodies in the junkyard. Chloe and Rachel start looking for apartments in New York. The weather is clear.)


End file.
